The growing silence of 'union radio'

The golden age of unions is long gone — and for the radio shows that focus on labor and workers rights, every day is a struggle just to stay on the airwaves.

There are a number of talk radio shows around the country covering — and funded by — organized labor that are still up and running, but like the labor movement as a whole, what remains is a far cry from the time when unions and the concerns of workers were a dominant part of the media landscape.

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“It’s literally dying on the vine,” said former radio host-turned-Democratic candidate for the Michigan House of Representatives Tony Trupiano. “The future does not look good for labor radio or progressive radio in any way, shape or form.”

People behind the shows with whom POLITICO spoke recently said their programs were in part sponsored or financially supported by advertising with union money. Individual donors also contribute to keep the shows — which broadcast from Pittsburgh, Madison, Wis., and Washington, among other cities — on air.

The niche has suffered some hard hits lately, with local programs in Michigan and Wisconsin going dark at the end of 2013. The dozen or so shows that still offer up labor and union concerns to radio listeners are mostly local, based in the country’s traditional union strongholds of Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. There’s just one nationally syndicated labor program in the country — “The Union Edge” — and it counts about 15 stations to its name.

The hosts and several radio observers say the programs are a bulwark against what they call the corporatization of the airwaves, and they argue that without the shows, labor issues such as raising the federal minimum wage and fighting right-to-work legislation would disappear altogether from radio.

“The issues of working Americans, whether they’re union members or not, are barely covered by the media in this country today,” said radio consultant Peter B. Collins, who hosts a liberal podcast. “And I don’t think that it’s an accident.”

At least 100 locally produced programs were on the air in the 1950s, during the heyday of unions, according to Elizabeth Fones-Wolf, a history professor at West Virginia University. In 1950, the AFL went live five nights a week over 176 radio stations, and, starting in 1953, the CIO show was broadcast on more than 150 network stations, she noted.

There were 16 labor radio programs during that era in Michigan alone, compared with about the same number across the whole country today.

“Labor’s voice was heard by the American public in ways that it’s absolutely not today,” said Fones-Wolf, who wrote about the labor movement’s history with radio in her book, “Waves of Opposition: Labor and the Struggle for Democratic Radio, 1933-58.”

For an explanation, look at what’s happened to the audience: In 1953, unions boasted 17.7 million members, or 32 percent of the workforce, while in 2012, union membership had dwindled to 14.5 million, or just 11.3 percent of the workforce.

Today, most shows are helmed by people with union connections but are not run by the unions themselves. The American Federation of Government Employees is an exception, with a weekly program, “Inside Government,” airing every Friday on D.C.’s Federal News Radio.

“We feel like it’s almost one of a kind because we have access to all of these great workers who are our members and they’re able to tell their stories every week,” host and producer Jason Forincola said.

At the end of 2013, two talk shows in the genre — the Detroit-based “Night Shift with Tony Trupiano” and Madison’s “The People’s Mic with Doug Cunningham” — went off the air. Trupiano ended his show to run for the Michigan State House, while Cunningham’s program bit the dust after two years due to financial problems.

Cunningham, who still hosts WIN, a daily, three-minute newscast out of Madison focused on labor news, noted that the small organization also had to lay off a news producer at the end of last year due to the financial crunch. “We had a crisis at the end of last year, a cash flow crisis where we were in danger of having to pull the plug on the news service entirely,” Cunningham said, adding that WIN was able to raise close to $90,000 to keep the labor newscast on the air.